Panic has a taste. It’s metallic, like sucking on old pennies, mixed with the sour tang of adrenaline flooding your system. Standing there on the pavement, the image of yourself from that impossible high angle burned onto your retinas, the anonymous text message glowing like a toxic ember in your hand– ‘It sees you.’– the world tilted. The mundane facade of Stillwater Creek ripped open, showing the buzzing, static-filled wrongness underneath.

  You shoved the phone into your pocket, the smooth glass suddenly feeling alien, corrupted. Every window in the Annex seemed like an eye. Every passerby could be the sender. Every car slowing down felt like surveillance.

  Get out. Get away.

  You broke into a jog, then a run, shoving past startled pedestrians, ignoring the indignant shouts. You didn't know where you were going, just away from the Annex, away from the perceived centre of this... this thing. Your lungs burned, your heart thrashed against your ribs, wild and desperate. The scar on your knuckle throbbed violently, a tiny, insistent drumbeat of dread.

  Where could you go? Home felt tainted, watched. Your apartment, usually a sanctuary of bland neutrality, now seemed like a potential cage. Work was unthinkable. Dave, your colleagues–they were still living in the world of budget reports and zoning variances. They wouldn’t understand. They’d think you were having a breakdown. Maybe you were. But the picture on Arthur’s computer, the growths, the old man, that text… it felt too real, too coherent in its sheer impossibility.

  You ducked into an alleyway pungent with the smell of overflowing dumpsters and stale urine, leaning against the cold brick wall, gasping for air. Your reflection stared back from a grimy puddle–wild-eyed, pale, definitely looking like someone on the verge of losing their shit.

  Okay. Think. Think. Don't let the panic win. Don't let the thought-murk settle.

  Arthur was gone, consumed by whatever he'd found. The city systems were... compromised? Infected? That archive photo, that text message–they weren't normal malfunctions. It felt targeted. Directed.

  Who else knew? Who else had seen these things?

  The old man. The creepy sketcher in the Canal Quarter lot. He knew the words. Still-Bloom. Veridian Weft. Thoughtless Garden. He spoke of it like it was an old, unpleasant neighbour, something you just learned to live with, or die from. He was disturbing, probably unbalanced, but he was the only other person you'd met who seemed aware, who put a name to the wrongness. Maybe he knew more. Maybe he knew what Arthur was looking for. Maybe he knew who sent that damn text.

  It was a long shot. He could be genuinely insane, his words just meaningless echoes of the city's underlying psychosis. But right now, he was the only lead you had that didn't involve official channels or potentially compromised technology.

  Decision made, you pushed yourself off the wall.

  The Old Canal Quarter wasn't far, maybe a twenty-minute walk if you cut through the less savory parts of downtown. You kept to the side streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares, pulling the collar of your jacket up, trying to look inconspicuous, invisible. Easier said than done when you feel like a giant, invisible eye is tracking your every step.

  The journey itself became a fresh layer of paranoia. Did the traffic lights stay red just a little too long as you approached? Was that flickering street sign displaying random characters for a split second? You passed an electronics store, TVs flickering in the window. For a moment, you swore every screen showed the same image–that grainy, black-and-white photo from the psychiatric archive, the figure with the vacant eyes and the fractal growths. You blinked hard, rubbed your eyes. When you looked again, they were showing news reports, garish commercials, bland nature documentaries. Just screens. Normal screens.

  Get a grip.

  But the feeling lingered. The signal beneath the noise. The pattern in the static.

  You passed a small cluster of people waiting at a bus stop. One woman was talking animatedly on her phone, using words that snagged your attention: "...total conceptual gridlock downtown, honey, you wouldn't believe it... yeah, feels like the whole semantic field is collapsing..." She spoke casually, like discussing the weather. Nobody else seemed to notice or react. The new language, spreading like a virus, asymptomatic in most, pathologically resonant in others. Cognito-shift. It was… happening?

  As you neared the Old Canal Quarter, the atmosphere palpably shifted. The air grew heavier, damper. The sounds became more muted–the distant traffic, the city hum–replaced by the gurgle of the unseen canal, the rustle of wind through decaying ivy, the creak of old buildings settling deeper into the damp earth. It felt like stepping back in time, or sideways into a place where time flowed differently.

  You found the overgrown lot behind the abandoned library easily enough. The sagging chain-link fence groaned in protest as you slipped through again. The place looked the same–choked weeds, cracked flagstones, the ominous presence of the dying tree.

  And the Still-Blooms. They were still there, pulsing with that silent, cold intensity. Maybe… maybe they looked bigger? Had the one on the tree roots spread further up the trunk? You couldn’t be sure. Memory is unreliable, especially when soaked in fear.

  The old man wasn’t sitting under the tree this time. The overturned bucket lay on its side, his sketchbook nowhere in sight. Disappointment warred with a strange sense of relief. Part of you hadn’t wanted to find him, hadn’t wanted to hear more cryptic pronouncements or see another horrifyingly accurate sketch.

  But where was he? You scanned the small lot. Empty. Just the weeds, the blooms, the decaying brickwork.

  Then you saw it. Tucked into the base of the largest Still-Bloom, the one erupting from the library wall like grotesque knuckles, was a small, folded piece of paper. Not old, not weathered. Crisp, clean white paper. Deliberately placed.

  Your heart started pounding again. A trap? A message? From the old man? Or from… the hell is watching from the sky?

  Hesitantly, you approached the growth. The air around it was freezing, raising goosebumps on your arms despite the mild day. The fractal patterns on its surface seemed sharper, more complex today. You resisted the urge to look too closely, afraid of seeing those warped reflections again. With trembling fingers, you snatched the folded paper from the base of the bloom. It felt unnaturally cold, like it had absorbed the chill of the growth itself.

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  You unfolded it quickly, stepping back towards the relative safety of the fence line. It wasn't a note, not exactly. It was a drawing. Done in the same detailed charcoal style as the portrait of you, unmistakably the old man’s work.

  It depicted a hand. Not a normal hand. The fingers were too long, jointed strangely, ending not in nails but in sharp, faceted points like tiny Still-Bloom shards. The skin was rendered with that same pale, almost translucent quality you’d seen in the archive photo. And nestled in the palm of this grotesque hand was a single, meticulously drawn object: a key. An old-fashioned skeleton key, ornate and slightly rusted. Below the drawing, a single word was scrawled in block capitals: PENVARNON.

  Arthur. The key was for Arthur. Or from Arthur? Or leading to Arthur? Did the old man know Arthur? Was he trying to help? Or was this part of the trap?

  Your mind raced, trying to piece it together. Arthur disappears, leaves his office in chaos, apparently cultivating a Still-Bloom. You find the old man, who knows the terminology, sketches your potential gruesome future, and now leaves a drawing of a freakish hand holding a key marked with Arthur’s name, placed deliberately at the base of another Still-Bloom.

  Coincidence? Not a fucking chance.

  This key… where would it fit? Arthur’s apartment? His office was already open, trashed. Some hidden archive? A safety deposit box?

  You looked at the drawing again. The hand holding the key… it wasn't just a hand. It looked disturbingly like the hand from the archive photo. The hand of a Thoughtless Garden patient. Was the old man implying Arthur was heading that way? Or that the key was hidden with something like that? The thought sent a fresh wave of nausea through you.

  Suddenly, a sound shattered the quiet of the lot. A harsh, electronic screech, like feedback from a dying speaker, erupted from somewhere nearby. It wasn't just loud; it felt sharp, like it was trying to physically pierce your eardrums. You clapped your hands over your ears, wincing.

  The screech cut off abruptly, replaced by a low, guttural clicking sound.

  Chk-chk-chk-chk…

  It was rhythmic, insect-like, and seemed to be coming from… inside the abandoned library?

  You froze, straining to listen over the frantic pounding of your own blood. The clicking continued, steady, persistent. It didn't sound like an animal. It didn't sound mechanical. It sounded… organic, but deeply peculiar. Like bones grating together, or chitinous plates rubbing against each other.

  Curiosity warred with primal fear. The library was boarded up tight. How could anything be making noise inside? And why did it start right after you found the drawing?

  Slowly, cautiously, you moved towards the library wall, peering at the boarded-up windows. Most were covered with thick plywood, nailed securely shut. But one, low down near the ground and partially obscured by overgrown bushes, had a single plank loose, warped by damp and time, leaving a dark gap about six inches wide. The clicking sound was definitely louder here.

  Don’t do it, screamed every rational instinct.

  Walk away. Run away. Call the cops (and tell them what?). This is how people die in horror movies.

  But Arthur… the key… the patient in the photo… the feeling of being watched… It all felt connected, pieces of a puzzle assembling itself around you, whether you wanted it to or not. You had to know.

  Taking a deep breath, you crouched down, pushing aside the scratchy bushes, and peered through the dark gap into the abandoned library.

  At first, you saw nothing but blackness and the faint shapes of overturned furniture coated in thick dust. The air drifting out smelled foul–decay, mildew, and something else, something acrid and faintly sweet, like rotting fruit mixed with ammonia. The clicking sound was loud now, echoing slightly in the enclosed space.

  Chk-chk-chk-chk…

  Then, something moved in the deepest shadows at the far end of the room.

  It shifted, unfolded, detached itself from the darkness. It was roughly humanoid in shape, but impossibly tall and thin, its limbs bending at angles that defied anatomy. Its skin–or exoskeleton?–was the colour of dirty parchment, stretched taut over sharp, bony ridges. It had no discernible face, just a smooth, ovoid shape where a head should be, reflecting the dim light faintly. Its long, multi-jointed arms, ending in sharp, pincer-like claws, were making the clicking sound as they manipulated something on the floor.

  The creature bent lower, its movements jerky, unnatural, like a stop-motion nightmare.

  What the hell IS that thing?

  Your mind recoiled, struggling to categorize the sheer wrongness of its form, the unsettling implication of its actions. It wasn't just vermin nesting in the decay. It looked purposeful. Attentive.

  It seemed to be tending to something on the floor, something small and pale amidst the debris.

  It was another Still-Bloom. Smaller than the ones outside, but pulsing with that same faint, internal light.

  The creature gently scraped away debris from around the growth with one of its sharp claws, its movements precise, almost… nurturing. Like a gardener tending some grotesque, alien seedling. The image sent a fresh wave of revulsion through you. What kind of unnatural life cultivates these things?

  Then, it paused. Its featureless head swivelled slowly, impossibly, directly towards the gap in the window where you were peering through.

  It couldn't see you. It was too dark. There was no way.

  But the clicking abruptly stopped. Absolute silence fell in the dusty room, broken only by the frantic thudding of your own heart. The creature remained perfectly still, oriented towards you, an embodiment of alien vigilance.

  Time stretched, thick and suffocating. You didn't dare breathe. Didn't dare move.

  Then, very slowly, one of its long, thin arms began to raise, extending towards the window, towards you. The sharp pincer at the end opened and closed slightly.

  Chk.

  That was enough. More than enough.

  You scrambled backwards, stumbling out of the bushes, thorns tearing at your clothes, your skin. You didn't wait to see if the creature came through the gap. You bolted, sprinting out of the lot, through the groaning fence, and onto the relative safety of the narrow street.

  You ran without looking back, the image of that faceless, clicking thing burned into your brain, the coldness of the Still-Bloom radiating from the folded paper still clutched tight in your hand.

  The key. Penvarnon. A creature tending a bloom inside the library. The old man’s cryptic warnings. It was all swirling together into a vortex of terror and impossible reality.

  You weren't just being watched by some unseen force anymore. You'd been directly noticed by one of the horrifying entities involved in this creeping strangeness. And you had a sickening feeling that the Still-Blooms weren't just appearing–they were being planted, cultivated by things that had no place on Earth, preparing the soil for something utterly monstrous.

  The cacophony was getting louder. And Stillwater Creek was starting to bloom in ways that had nothing to do with urban renewal.